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One remaining McLaren Senna raises £2 million for the Ayrton Senna Institute

13 Dec 2017

Final and one remaining build allocation for new track-concentrated McLaren Senna auctioned at private event for McLaren customers

£2 million raised for the Ayrton Senna Institute, a non-profit organisation dedicated to providing education for nearly two million unprivileged children and youngsters

New McLaren Senna is the ultimate McLaren track car, legalised for the road

Intensive bidding throughout a spirited auction at a private event for McLaren customers saw the final and one remaining build allocation for a new McLaren Senna raising an astonishing £2 million for underprivileged children and youngsters in Brazil.

Revealed to the world online at 00:01 on December 10, 2017, the McLaren Senna is the most extreme road car to date from McLaren Automotive. Designed, engineered and developed with the single-minded purpose of being the ultimate McLaren track car legalised for the road, the McLaren Senna is the purest expression yet of the McLaren ‘form follows function’ design philosophy.

The last of the 500 build allocations was discretely held back to be auctioned at an annual event for passionate devotees of the McLaren brand and its cars. With guests believing that every example of the new McLaren Senna had been allocated, excitement was palpable when the surprise auction was announced. Fierce bidding saw auctioneer Max Girardo kept on his toes before the gavel fell at £2,000,000 excluding taxes – more than three times the UK list price of the new McLaren Senna.

“The McLaren Senna is the personification of McLaren’s motorsport DNA, designed without compromise to excel on a race circuit, but legalised for road use,” explained Mike Flewitt, Chief Executive Officer, McLaren Automotive. “Only 500 will be built and to raise such a significant sum at auction for a cause as worthy as the Instituto Ayrton Senna – the foundation that cherishes the legacy of one of McLaren’s greatest Formula 1 racing drivers – is both a genuine pleasure for McLaren and a testament to the desirability of our new Ultimate Series car.”

The indomitable spirit of Ayrton Senna has always been alive at McLaren – with whom he won all three of his Formula 1 World Championships – and the McLaren Senna will further amplify his global legacy and link to the McLaren brand.

“Raising this amount of money for the Instituto Ayrton Senna is a wonderful result for our collaboration with McLaren Automotive,” commented Viviane Senna da Silva Lalli, Ayrton's sister and mother of racing driver and McLaren ambassador, Bruno Senna. “The Senna family has a long-standing association with the McLaren brand and when the idea of a new model in the McLaren Ultimate Series taking Ayrton’s name was raised, we were immediately interested to explore the possibility. Now that the McLaren Senna has been revealed, we can say publicly how happy we are to be a part of this project.”

The legendary Brazilian Formula 1 racing driver was renowned for his exceptional powers of concentration and single-minded focus on being the best on the track. The ambition is the same for the McLaren Senna, the driver hardwired into the dynamic experience the car delivers, every sensation that comes from driving at speed precisely communicated to ensure complete control.

With a 4.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8 engine producing 800PS (789bhp) and torque of 800Nm (590 lb ft) – the most powerful road car internal combustion engine ever created by McLaren – and a lightest dry weight of only 1,198kg*, the McLaren Senna is ferociously quick. More importantly, the aerodynamic qualities and RCC II RaceActive Chassis Control hydraulic suspension of the car ensure that it has incredible circuit ability: the ambition for the McLaren Senna is for it to be the best road-legal track car, setting a new benchmark for track prowess.

“Our family is extremely proud of the naming of the new Ultimate Series McLaren. This is the first project that really connects with Ayrton’s racing spirit and performance and the McLaren Senna honours my uncle because it is so utterly dedicated to delivering a circuit experience that allows a driver to be the best they can possibly be.”

Bruno Senna, racing driver and McLaren Ambassador

More information about the McLaren Senna, together with images and films, is available at http://cars.mclaren.com/ultimate-series/mclaren-senna. The ultimate road-legal, track-concentrated McLaren will make its public debut in March, at the 88th Geneva International Motor Show.

Ends

Notes to Editors:

* lightest dry weight, without fluids

A selection of high resolution images accompanying this release is available to download from the McLaren Automotive media site – cars.mclaren.press

About the Ayrton Senna Institute:

We believe that Education is the key to a better world. For that reason, for over 20 years, inspired by the will of the three-time Formula 1 world champion Ayrton Senna, we have been working to take good quality education to millions of Brazilian children and young people. Our mission is to develop a human being as a whole, preparing them for life in the 21st century in all its aspects.

For that purpose, we build the bridge between education and the other sciences to promote the creation of evidence-based educational policies and practices. Based on the main education challenges, identified by public administrators and educators with whom we work on a daily basis, we systematize and validate knowledge that is critical for the advance of our educational agenda, in a work that is tightly connected with the public teaching networks. All knowledge produced is shared with more players through initiatives of education, diffusion, advocacy, technical cooperation and technology transfer.

We operate in a network with education professionals, researchers from the various fields of knowledge, other third-sector organizations, business people and citizens who are engaged in promoting a solid change to the foundations of schools. Our actions are financed by donations, licensing resources and by partnerships with the private sector. Considering our initiatives focused in Elementary and High School, we are in 17 States and more than 660 municipalities, where we support the formation of more than 60 thousand teachers and benefit more than 1.5 million students per year.

McLaren Automotive is a British manufacturer of luxury, high-performance sports and super cars, located at the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) in Woking, Surrey. For the past 30 years, McLaren has pioneered the use of carbon fibre in vehicle production and since introducing a carbon chassis into racing and road cars with the 1981 McLaren MP4/1 and 1993 McLaren F1 respectively, McLaren has not built a car without a carbon fibre chassis.

Following the global launch of McLaren Automotive in 2010, the groundbreaking 12C was revealed in 2011, the 12C Spider in 2012, and the limited-run McLaren P1™ went into production in 2013. In keeping with its plan to introduce a new model each year, the company unveiled the 650S, in Coupé and Spider form in 2014, while 2015 proved to be a year of unprecedented growth of the product portfolio with five new models launched across the full range. The strictly limited edition 675LT Coupé premiered at the Geneva Motor Show alongside the track-only McLaren P1™ GTR which, with 1,000PS, became the most powerful model ever produced by the brand. The much-anticipated Sports Series became the third – and final – model tier in the McLaren range with the 570S Coupé and 540C Coupé debuting in New York and Shanghai respectively, less than one month apart. The end of 2015 saw the launch of the fifth model, the 675LT Spider, which was as a direct response to customer demand. The year also saw the end of production for the first model in the Ultimate Series as the 375th McLaren P1™ was completed, closing what had become a defining year for the British brand. 2016 continued where 2015 had left off with the introduction of the 570GT - a second bodystyle for the Sports Series and the most luxurious car McLaren has ever built, as well as the 570S GT4 and 570S Sprint track variants. 2016 also marked the introduction of the company’s new business plan, Track22, which sees the company investing £1B in Research and Development to deliver 15 all new cars or derivatives by the end of 2022, of which at least 50% will feature hybrid technology. The uplift in sales in 2016 also saw the launch of the second shift at the McLaren Production Centre as well as the company’s third year of profitability in just six years of trading. In March 2017, the second-generation Super Series was introduced at the Geneva Motor Show with the global premiere of the McLaren 720S. The first convertible model in the Sports Series, the 570S Spider, was revealed in June 2017 and made its public debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

McLaren Automotive Partners To support the development, engineering and manufacture of its range of innovative and highly acclaimed sports cars, McLaren Automotive has partnered with world leading companies to provide specialist expertise and technology including, AkzoNobel, Kenwood, Pirelli, Richard Mille and SAP.